powerful biography about one Ponca Chief and his love for his homeland during the mass Native American removal of thes, The book touches on the role he played in opening up the question of Native American equality on legal and moral grounds during a crucial turning point in Native relations.
In, Chief Standing Bear's Ponca Indian tribe was forcibly removed from their Nebraska homeland and marched to what was then known as Indian Territory now Oklahoma, in what became the tribe's own Trail of Tears.
"I Am a Man" chronicles what happened when Standing Bear set off on a sixhundredmile walk to return the body of his only son to their traditional burial ground.
Along the way, it examines the complex relationship between the United States government and the small, peaceful tribe and the legal consequences of land swaps and broken treaties, while never losing sight of the heartbreaking journey the Ponca endured.
It is a story of survivalof a people left for dead who arose from the ashes of injustice, disease, neglect, starvation, humiliation, and termination, On another level, it is a story of life and death, despair and fortitude, freedom and patriotism, A story of Christian kindness and bureaucratic evil, And it is a story of hopeof a people still among us today, painstakingly preserving a cultural identity that had sustained them for centuries before their encounter with Lewis and Clark in the fall of.
Before it ends, Standing Bear's long journey home also explores fundamental issues of citizenship, constitutional protection, cultural identity, and the nature of democracyissues that continue to resonate loudly in twentyfirstcentury America.
It is a story that questions whether native sovereignty, tribalbased societies, and cultural survival are compatible with American democracy, Standing Bear successfully used habeas corpus, the only liberty included in the original text of the Constitution, to gain access to a federal court and ultimately his freedom, This account aptly illuminates how the nation's delicate system of checks and balances worked almost exactly as the Founding Fathers envisioned, a system arguably out of whack and under siege today.
Joe Starita's wellresearched and insightful account reads like historical fiction as his careful characterizations and vivid descriptions bring this piece of American history brilliantly to life, Anyone with a passing knowledge of American history already knows about the shameful treatment of Native Americans by our government, but reading the horrific details always produces fresh revulsion, If you don't leave this book infuriated by what you've read, you're not doing humanity right,
"I Am A Man" is the
story of Chief Standing Bear, a Ponca Indian whose people were forcibly removed from their land as the result of a stupid bureaucratic mistake, no less, promised assistance in moving and rebuilding at the inferior location they were relocated to and then repeatedly denied it, and largely ignored in their efforts to seek redress for their grievances.
Read the book or use Google for the details, as long as you're prepared to be disgusted,
There are, despite the horrors, some heroes in this book, including Standing Bear himself but also white Americans who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw Ponca suffering and tried to heal it, saw the undeclared yet transparent war on Native Americans and tried to stop it.
As always throughout history, these progressives were a minority when they began their efforts, but became a majority or at least won the support of a critical mass through their tireless advocacy for liberty and justice for all.
The heroes include Thomas Tibbles, a muckraking journalist who brought the plight of the Poncas to a national audience, They include General George Crook, who was charged with the responsibility of imprisoning Standing Bear for his refusal to follow orders yet developed the legal theory that eventually lead to CSB's release and recognition as deserving of the protection of our Constitution.
And the heroes include white settlers who provided food and shelter to Standing Bear and his people as they traveledmiles in the dead of winter to return to their homeland.
CSB said that not once was he refused when he asked for help from individual people, . . despite the fact that the government of those helpers was enacting policies that would decimate the Ponca, It's an interesting lesson in the reality that distance from suffering allows too many people to tolerate it, when they never would if the suffering was happening right in front of them comparable to today's acceptance of the forced separation of migrant children from their parents by our government by many people who would hopefully recoil in horror if they saw a family torn apart in their presence.
Ultimately IAAM is about Chief Standing Bear's fight for legal standing and the protections of the U, S. Constitution, which untilhad never recognized Natives Americans as human beings, Standing Bear's case resulted in his recognition as a “person” under the law, entitled to the rights and protections of the Constitution, He and his people were, eventually, allowed to return to a much smaller piece of the land from which they had been forced, His was an important case, which resolved his particular complaint in his favor, It did not, unfortunately, do much to remedy the larger problem of the U, S. government's treatment of Native Americans throughout the generations, which has still not been remedied to this day, Incredible story of Standing Bear, chief of the Ponca Tribe, They were forced from their Northern Nebraska land into a reservation in Oklahoma, They lost many members on the 'trail of tears' and even more on the new, inhospitable reservation, Government promises of housing, farm implements, livestock and food were never delivered, Standing Bear and a group of followers walked back north inin an attempt to reclaim their land and save their people, A reporter, Thomas Tibbles took up their plight and spread their story far and wide, A legal team of scholarly lawyers and businessmen were assembled to take the case to the government, It took two years for the government to decide that Indians were a free people, It took another two years and the Dawes Act to protect "the property of the natives", The story about Standing Bear is very important in American history, I didn't learn of Standing Bear and his tribe's struggle and eventual victory until I read this book, Standing Bear was a chief in the Ponca tribe in thes, The U. S. government was moving Indian tribes into present day Oklahoma, The Poncas lived and farmed in northeastern Nebraska when a government Indian agent visited them and told them that it had been decided that the Ponca had to move south to "Indian territory.
" The U. S. had given the Poncas land which had been certified with a treaty to belong to Poncas twenty years earlier to the Lakota, Not only had the government reneged on the treaty, but they had given the Poncas land to enemies of the Ponca, The Lakota and Ponca had been enemies for generations, The author tells the complicated story of how the government betrayed the Ponca time and again with worthless promises and broken treaties, The important part of Standing Bear's history is that he went to court, and it was the first time that an Indian was declared to be a person who has rights that the U.
S. must respect that are guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment to the constitution, I liked it when the author told part of Standing Bear's story and then would fast forward to present day to tell about a descendent who was living in the same spot and tell how that person related to and felt about their ancestors.
I learned a lot about the government's Indian policy and the citizens feelings about it at that time in thes tos, The book did drag at some spots and was emotionally difficult to read at times, The author had a sometimes choppy sentence structure short simple sentences that made me wonder if he was trying to imitate an Indian's pattern of speech as he's transitioning from his language to English.
The sentence structure seemed strange and hard to read until I got used to it,.for importance.
A seemingly wellresearched recounting of the changes in the way the U, S. government dealt with the Ponca Indians in the lateth century, After creating good farmsteads in northern Nebraska on the Niobrara River, the Poncas were sent to Indian Territory now Oklahoma on a new reservation, For a variety of reasons mainly cited in the book, including many deaths from malaria, the loss of homes, farm equipment, crops, deathbed promises, and other results of hard work, some of the Poncas, led by Chief Standing Bear, headed north towards the old homelands.
Eventually, all of this led to a landmark court case when Chief Standing Bear sued the commandant of the military post who arrested them in preparation for returning the runaways to the south.
And there's more to the story and the explanations, when available, in this book, Quite frankly, this is one of the times those of us with European American ancestry feel a deep sense of shame, Not necessarily for things my own family may or may not have done, but the collective guilt about the handling of "the Indian question, " But there are some definite good results from the trials and tribulations of this tribe during this time,
Recommended for those interested in American history and/or social justice, A TRULY Heroic American Struggle,
I heard the basics of this heroic struggle growing up in Omaha, This is an engrossing, and painful history of a defining time in American history, This should be in every classroom in the US,
The fact that General Cook came to his defense after a lifetime fighting Native Americans is amazing as well,
Everyone should read this work! I rate this book a rarestars, The main story is incredible, and although Id heard it before, this book took it to a different level, Also its always interesting to read about the place where you live, Not only is this a United States Civil Rights story, but also a Nebraska story, and even an Omaha story its very cool to think that the crux of it happened just a few blocks from where I live now.
Also, no part of the story was prolonged in the book I was worried that the court case might take up several chapters it did not, it was to the point and we got the key takeaways.
To me, this was a story about change and willingness to change, Either choosing to change or choosing not to change or having change forced upon you,
I think General George Crook, the “Armys most experienced Indian fighter”, is a hero, He had enough guts to change the way he thought about Native Americans and do something about it, So in the middle of the night, he snuck off and told the newspaper, “come report on this what were doing is not right”, And during Standing Bear v, Crook, at the end of the Standing Bears speech, Crook was the first one to stand up and shake Standing Bears hand,
Judge Elmer Dundy seemed to have a change of heart also as it relates to Native Americans, He has been called an “Indianhating judge”, but here it seems he was able to change his mind enough to rule in Standing Bears favor,
Standing Bear was obviously forced to change, in many ways, However, the changes I thought were most interesting were the changes he chose to make, The fact that he wanted to assimilate, So much so that during their speaking tour on the East Coast, he wanted to and eventually did, cut his hair and buy a new suit,
“More and more, the boy noticed, his father had taken to wearing white mans clothing shoes, trousers, shirts, sometimes a hat, ”
I also heard on the sitelinkConstitutional podcast, that Chief Standing Bear wanted his son to learn the ways of the white man, He sent his son to school to learn English and to church to learn about the white mans God, He would be the bridge between the old way to the new way,
This to me, is an interesting point to think about, Standing Bear was very willing to change to the new ways and was proactively trying to position his son and the future of their tribe to assimilate more, I guess it could be argued both ways on whether or not thats good or bad, However, there was a concept of the new way which Standing Bear would have much difficulty comprehending and would not really accept the individual ownership of land,
The United States Government, on the other hand, did not seem willing to change even though several individuals within the government were,
“twentytwo years after his homeland has been given away to the Lakota,
eleven years after a federal judge set him free with nowhere to go,
ten years after the Great Father pledge to return all their lands,
nine years after Congress approved the Ponca Relief Bill,
three years after the Dawes act,
a year after the Great Sioux Reservation was dismantled
Standing bear received Allotment No.
: a.acre parcel”
It seemed that no matter what victories were had within government policies, reality never changed much for Standing Bear and the Ponca,
At the end of the book, I had very mixed feelings, Sure, Standing Bear gave a great speech and won the case but did he ever get what he really wanted He got to bury his son in their homeland, which I suppose was some consolation.
But things were never the same as beforewhen the Ponca were forced to walk off of their homeland to the Indian Territory, This, too, is change. This exhaustively researched book reminds us of an important piece of history, the story of Chief Standing Bear and his efforts to get any kind of a fair shake from the U.
S. government. It's a sad story. I found the book to be somewhat dry, with its "just the facts" style, A PBS documentary would have been an equally appropriate and perhaps more engaging medium for the story, Standing Bear's story is important in legal history, but I would have been more interested in a richer exploration of the intersection between cultures, Great book about a heartbreaking time in American history, A good time to read this to be reminded we are all humans, .